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Russia tops NATO summit agenda — Column

By Andrew Hammond
11:09 p.m. CDT September 4, 2014

President Obama arrives in England Wednesday to attend the NATO summit in Wales.(Photo: Charles Dharapak, AP)

Leaders from 28 countries are preparing for a landmark NATO summit this week in Wales that will map the way ahead for the military alliance. A quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen calls the meeting "one of the most important" in NATO's 65-year history.

While the summit has a broad focus, Russia is at the top of the agenda. Following Moscow's annexation of Crimea, incursions into Ukraine, and the downing of Malaysian Airways Flight 17, the military alliance's relationship (and that of the wider West) with Russia is at its lowest point since the Cold War.

NATO summits are not regular meetings, but instead key moments in the military alliance's evolution and decision-making. For instance, the first post-Cold War summit of the military alliance was held in London in 1990 and included measures for enhancing relations with Central and European countries — many of which have subsequently become NATO members.

Twenty-five years later, there is genuine alarm about the West's capability to respond to a significantly enhanced Russian security threat. Earlier this month, for instance, Britain's House of Commons Defense Committee released a report that depicts recent events as a "wake-up call for NATO, especially following Moscow's earlier decision to invade Georgia in 2008, and launch a cyber attack on Estonia in 2007.

The study points to "serious deficiencies" in NATO's preparedness and asserts "radical reform" is needed. Among the measures that it calls for include: a continuous detail of NATO troops in "vulnerable" Baltic states; "dramatic" improvements in rapid reaction forces; and adding unconventional threats (e.g. cyber attacks and irregular militia attacks) to NATO's security commitments that require member states to come to the aid of any counterparts subject to attack.

The study's recommendations will be part of the discussions at the summit, but is not identical. In Wales, a series of reforms will be discussed, including an Alliance Readiness Action Plan to improve NATO's defense. One of the pre-announced elements of this plan will be the deployment of NATO troops for the first time in bases in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Whereas Russia has increased defense spending by some 80 percent since 2008, NATO spending has decreased around 20 percent. Thus, there will be a particular stress to end recent rounds of NATO defense cuts. Today, the United States accounts for around two-thirds of defense spending in NATO countries. European countries will therefore be urged, yet again, to meet guidelines for spending 2 percent of GDP on defense"

A key part of the new readiness plan is bolstering the top 16 capabilities NATO will need to improve on to meet present and future security challenges. These include intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, missile defense, and cyber security.

Taken overall, the summit represents a key opportunity for NATO to agree to a reform package that provides enhanced strategic direction for the next 5-10 years. Leaders from the 28 member countries will want to discuss the outlines of a longer-term response to Russian actions in Ukraine; try to finalize the post-2014 mission in Afghanistan; and agree on a new global engagement strategy.

Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics, and a former United Kingdom government special adviser.